Loyds TSB Bank Social Media Team vs British Gas Social Media Team

Recently I have had 2 issues. One with Lloyds TSB Bank and the other with British Gas. The reason for writing this blog post is to highlight my experience of their social media teams. One was excellent, the other awful. 

British Gas Experience

A few months ago, I asked for a name to be removed from my Gas Bill. I have lived in my flat for over 2 years and needed some simple housekeeping to the bill done. I have never missed a payment, the account is up to date so thought this would be a simple process. To cut a very long story short. It was a total nightmare. In fact they removed me from the bill and left just the other person. Whilst this situation was ongoing, I must have called their customer care number at least 7 times and spent at least 40 mins on each call going over things with each new person. Whilst I was calling their customer care, I was tweeting @BritishGasHelp with what was happening.

After my 7th failed attempt, I contacted the social media team. I have to say that within minutes Tom their main man was on the case. Sorting it all out for me. Calling me back when he said he would, helping me by advising me what had happened, and how he was personally going to sort it out. He also apologised for their errors. He then followed it up with tweets giving me feedback and dates on when things would happen & then when it had all been sorted, called me to make sure all was ok. Exactly how customer care should be done.

He took ownership of the issue, had the authority to actually do something and then went and actually did it and kept me firmly in the loop with what was happening.

Lloyds TSB Bank Experience

On March 25th 2013 I went into the Lloyds TSB branch in High Road Finchley N12. In the branch I handed in a form to close a business bank account. I have had this account for well over 3 years, it has never had a penny in it, and it costs me bank charges each month even though I am not using it.

I checked my Online banking and it has remained live ever since. Then suddenly appeared the £5.15 bank charges. Instead of calling the Bank, I decided to contact their social media team. Surely this was a simple thing. I had already closed the account. They replied to me saying that they would get a relationship manager to contact me. Nothing. I have since then contacted them a further 3 times asking when this person was going to contact me. All they keep saying is that someone will contact me. Nothing, Nada…

Tonight, on the 9th May, I gave up on waiting and decided to call them. So firstly what was the point of having a social media team? they sorted nothing out, resolved nothing and if the idea was that it stops customers calling in, err.. wrong as well. I called their Internet banking division. 8 mins of waiting and got through to someone. He told me.. Wrong department and he could do nothing. He then transferred me.. err right.. the old pretending to transfer someone to a never answered phone line.

I then hung up and called the normal banking customer care number. 8 mins or so of waiting and then I got through to someone. Explained what I wanted to do, His reply was that he could not close the account, and that he was going to give my number to a relationship manager to call me. Err Why? the account has never had a penny in it, never been used. So why do I need to speak to someone else who supposedly will call me?

A very simple situation has been made so complex and time consuming. I have already handed in the form to a branch. I have now had to waste more time speaking to people that cannot help or do anything to sort it out for me. This would have been a perfect situation for their social media team. Take ownership, deal with it and keep me posted on what they had done. But no.. It was a total waste of time.

I hope that these 2 examples highlight the difference that a well run social media team can have to a businesses customer care. British Gas got it sorted and for me my first port of call will always be their social media team. Lloyds TSB Bank were awful. Everyone just passing me from pillar to post for what was a simple thing.

Love to hear your comments on this or any other social media examples of good and bad customer care.

Update

On Friday 10th May I received 2 calls from Lloyds TSB Managers. One of them closed the account down and later on the other Manager apologised for what had happened and offered me compensation by way of a sorry that this had happened. I also was invited to take part with their Online customer service questionnaire which I duly did.

Businesses should start a customer care twitter channel

For many businesses the idea of being on Twitter is a sound one. But the idea of tweeting social chit chat with the personality of a human being is very difficult. What do they say on a regular basis? Many businesses then fall into the trap of simply tweeting quotes, the weather, website news and generally things of no real value. They do this so that it looks like they are tweeting. In reality this is total waste of time, effort and energy.

One of the ways round this issue is to dedicate the account to be a customer service Twitter channel. Not a substitute to other ways that a customer can contact you but an addition. Then you don’t need to worry about tweeting general chit chat, social stuff, quotes, weather news, and so on. All you need to do is reply and respond to your customers. Yes, you can tweet company news, offers, updates on products and so on but essentially you are there as an extra channel to communicate and answer your customers.

Whether you like it or not Twitter as a communication channel is here to stay. Approx 500 million accounts and approx 500 million daily tweets going out. So you really do need to offer your customers Twitter as a channel to communicate with you. Many customers will tweet a business well before email, writing, phoning etc.. I would actively encourage you to tell all your customers to contact you via Twitter. But you will need to put a few things in place first.

You should have a Twitter username that reflects what the account does. I would instead of having a personal name, have the business name with help or cares at the end. Then have written down your hours that you will be available to reply back. You many also want to tell people who is in the customer care team. Each tweet can have their initials at the end to let people know who has replied.

You should also have an escalation policy. What do you do when you can’t simply answer the customer. When do you request that you follow each other so that you can carry on the conversation via private direct message and finally what is your policy for when things have really got out of hand. Senior managers may need to be involved, it may need to go to email as Twitter limits lengths of tweets and so on.

In an ideal world Twitter allows businesses to humanise their brand. Chat to people, be social and so on. But from training and consulting many businesses this is often the bit they find the hardest. However all businesses should be used to offering some sort of customer care so adding Twitter as an extra channel should not represent too many challenges.

Before you go off and set up your customer care channel, make sure your staff are well trained and supported and given good guidance and guidelines on what to say, how to say it, and when to say things.

Has Twitter removed your username or your tweets from the search..

One of the key battles that Twitter has on its hands is to remove the spammers. The people that set up accounts and just send out tons and tons of the same tweets with basically the same links in to the same website. Clearly with approx 500 million accounts and approx 400 million tweets per day being sent out, they cannot rely on an army of individuals to monitor this. They instead utilise algorithms to analyse things.

So what do they do when an account is sending out many of the same duplicated links to things. They start off with 2 things. They remove that account from being found by someone searching for their username and secondly they remove all their tweets from being found in any search results.

You can test to see if you are showing up here: Go to http://search.twitter.com and type into the search box:

from:your twitter username – You should get all the recent tweets you have sent. If you get a return of nothing found, you have been removed.

type the hashtag or keyword that you are looking for  - A whole load of results will show up. Are any of the results your tweets?  If no, then again you have been removed from the search.

Why has this happened as I am not a spammer?

One reason is that suddenly you have been promoting a new website, every tweet you send out has had the same link in. You have lost all sense of balance by not sending out any other tweets. Twitter may well consider you a spammer and remove you from the search results. There are some other reasons why you may not be in the search results – You can find them here and also more here.

Be warned, if you continue to have a very unbalanced Twitter account. If all you do is post duplicate links then there is a real chance that you will eventually be suspended. To avoid this, your Tweets should be a mixture of social chit chat, replies to others, adding value, sharing things, linking to new blog posts, retweeting other people’s things, having fun and being social.

If you have found that you are no longer in the search results, you will need to raise a Twitter Support Ticket.